Millions of users await SA artists after Spotify launch

The music streaming service, which boasts millions of active users, went live in South Africa on Monday.  

“One thing that is special and that we like in South Africa is that artists will be given access to 159 million customers,” Spotify Europe, Middle East and Africa managing director Michael Krause said.

“We hope that more South African artist will have great exposure outside South Africa. We also want to make it possible that more artists live off their work due to our service.”

Artists, labels and aggregators that use the Spotify for Artists service will have access to a dashboard that allows them to view their music’s performance and listener demographics.

On the receiving end, customers will be able to opt for the service’s Free or Premium tiers. The company’s Middle East and Africa head Claudius Boller said the Free service was made possible with the help of ads while the Premium option was being sold at R59.99 ($5) per month. This is considerably cheaper than the $9.99 offered to US subscribers. 

But in what seems to be a hard push to acquaint the brand with South Africans, Boller said that the Free service had its advantages.

“There are a few interruptions from advertising, so on average if you listen to Spotify for an hour, you only get about three minutes of ads. This is less than a radio station so it’s more convenient,” he said, adding that Spotify Premium has no advertising and allows users to take the music offline.

Spotify said its playlists were a unique selling point. These could be created based on the needs and taste of individual users.

“We have more than 35 million songs and 2 billion playlists that are created by Spotify’s in-house team of curators or by its users,” Spotify South Africa’s Melanie Carmen said. “Spotify tailors it music recommendations specifically to you.”

Boller said user-created playlists could be shared on social media and that musicians could share their personal playlists with their fan base. “Ed Sheeran has one of the most famous playlists, so you can listen to what artists listen to before they go on stage,” he said.

Spotify South Africa also boasts localised content that allows users to access a catalogue of their favourite local artists on all devices. The service hopes that more playlists are added as more artists are introduced to the platform. There are about 20 South African playlists on Spotify at the moment.

The company said that before entering the South African market it had researched the country’s data costs and integrated an automatic data saver option that could stream music at 24kbps, which translated to about 10mb of data per hour. Spotify also offers 96kbps, 160kbps and 320kbps streaming for Premium users.

The Swedish company also launched in Israel, Romania, and Vietnam on Tuesday.